October 09, 2006

As is my standard disclaimer, I will make mention here again that I am fully aware that no matter what the Yankees did in the postseason--win, lose, or draw--they at least got there, which is more than I can say for my Red Sox. I realize that no matter how founded in reality any gloating may be, it's only going to look like sour grapes to our enemies.

And maybe this makes me a bad Sox fan, but there are Yankees fans I like. Chief among them is Alex, who was my first thought after Sam when the Tigers won. Alex makes it very hard for me to generalize about Yankees fans. I just don't have it in me right now to taunt and tease, thinking of him.

That said, I am relieved beyond words that the Yankees were eliminated. Thank God for that. Not because my Yankee brethren are upset, but because I won't have to deal with worrying about whether or not they'll win it all this year and really rub the Sox' noses in it. Any success the Yankees had after overtaking the Sox would have been further disappointment, knowing we had been trampled to get there.

And while I am trying to refrain from flashing the 'tude toward fans, I have endless criticism for the Yankees franchise in general, especially right now. I wouldn't be able to stand it if they had simply gone out, jacked up their payroll another eight figures, and bought themselves another championship. That, to quote Larry the Cable Guy, would've made me madder than a one-legged stripper doing a table hop.

I also can only stand by and watch in astonishment as their fan base and front office implode because the Yankees have...failed to win the World Series for...SIX. ENTIRE. YEARS.

I mean, we're talking Onion-esque headlines (as Jere put it) and talk of firing Joe Torre and trading A-Rod and George Steinbrenner having to be sedated (okay, I made that last part up. Or, at least, I didn't fact-check it).

I guess when you pay north of $200 million for a baseball team, you are going to expect them to win. But witness the 80's, that "trough period" of Yankees team suckitude, in which the Yankees led the league in payroll and also led the league in complete insanity in the front office.

It just baffles me, though, the way some--not all--of New York has reacted to this latest defeat--and this is including and especially George Steinbrenner. The sheer, unadulterated, unmitigated, matter-of-fact greed involved in the ability of a grown, rich, successful man to throw a tantrum because the Yankees have not won a World Championship this decade is not something I can quite understand.

If this truly is the return of the Billy Martin era (with Lou Pinella in the Martin role), that's good news for Sox fans. If they can't get rid of A-Rod and that show pony hangs out in the Bronx like an albatross around the neck of the fans who gloated when he was signed and now loathe him more with every passing second, that's also good for the Sox (and good for when I need to practice my cackling).

But I have to also admit to a certain ennui about the whole situation, under the surface of shadenfreunde. I can't really feel sorry for anyone in this situation, but I have to say I do feel a weird kind of disappointment watching the chaos ensue down south. Because it's also good for the Red Sox to have a rivalry in the division, and for that rivalry to be competitive. It makes our winning mean that much more.

Anyway, it's now officially football season (although I will continue to root, at least in spirit, for the Tigers). And hatin' on the Colts? Now that I can do.

October 06, 2006

"I do believe good pitching stops good hitting, but I didn't believe that good pitching could stop great hitting."

GOD JOE MORGAN SUCKS.

It's official, after watching the Mets-Dodgers last night with only passing interest, that I am actually--for the duration of this postseason at least--a Tigers fan.

I am into this Yankees-Tigers game tonight. Especially since the ESPN broadcast tools are so, so clearly pulling for the Yankees. It's really pretty disgusting, actually. They keep repeating, in disbelief, that Kenny Rogers "has lost his last seven decisions against the Yankees", as if that would somehow invoke the gods to come and rescue their poor pinstripers.

He’s a great baseball player. I get it. I GET IT. I acknowledge it. DEREK JETER IS REALLY GOOD AT BASEBALL. He can hold a big stick of shaped wood and swing it around and make contact with a small white ball in a fashion that we have arbitrarily decided is meaningful, and he can also run around an arbitrarily designated area and catch said small white ball, and he can do these things better than 99.998% of humanity while getting paid vast sums of money for his troubles. He is the AWSUMEST!!11! Kids love him, fellow players love him, teammates love him, ladies love him, announcers love him long time. Derek Jeter: good at what he does.

Now SHUT UP.

But it's not just confined to Jeter, tonight. Joe Morgan and Jon Miller are just...their palpable dismay whenever Rogers strikes out another Yankees hitter...the way they gnitpick about how batting average isn't the best statistic to measure hitting when it's pointed out to them that the Yankees lineup that they call "the greatest in history" doesn't have the highest batting average in history, but then turn around and tout batting average as a measure of greatness when ballwashing Yankees players...

I just can't say this enough. If you can't call an impartial game, don't be a national broadcaster.

Ernie Halwell was in the booth with the boys for an inning or so tonight, which made it even more embarrassing for them, I think. Then again, it also felt as if Halwell was simply more suited to speaking to a more informed audience--and a more captive one; today's cable sports analysts do have a different task at hand with all the choices for entertainment on and off television for people, and the waning interest in the game.

Anyway. The Tigers. I am excited about the Tigers. I believe that most of the time, whoever wins the second game of a series has the advantage, because if that team didn't win the first game they're proving themselves a worthy opponent, and if that team did win the first game, they're taking a sizeable opening advantage, especially in a five-game series. The second game is all-important, and the Tigers won it yesterday. They won it from behind, on the road, yesterday.

In fairness, no amount of haterade is going to change the fact that the Yankees made the postseason and the Red Sox didn't. Even if they lose, they still made it, and we didn't. So take my commentary here with a grain of salt, because yes, the Yankees beat my team and there's nothing I can really say about it.

But GOD I AM PRAYING FOR THEM NOT TO WIN. It would be awful if they went on, painful if they won the Pennant, unbearable if they won it all this year. Dear God, is my prayer every night, please do not let the Mother Fucking Yankees win the World Series this year. I think if thoughts could be seen, that collective message would be blinking into space from the American Northeast.

So really I'm a Tigers fan because I'm a "Whoever's Playing the Yankees" fan. And because the National League teams are out, because none of them are as cute as the Astros, and because they are all basically just dicking around waiting to find out which American League team is going to beat them. And because Oakland, I have decided, is to the Red Sox as the Steelers are to the Patriots--the clash of cultures between fan bases has the same feeling. And because of Sam. And because, as with the White Sox last year, I looked at the Tigers this year around midseason and they had the same glow. It's hard to prove, and hard to describe, but I've believed from at least midseason--even when the Tigers faltered--that this is probably the Tigers' year. My similar feeling about the White Sox last year turned out to be dead on--let's hope that holds true this time as well.

This is the first baseball postseason I've paid attention to in which the Red Sox did not play. It's an odd feeling. Like crashing a party where you weren't invited.

Last night Julia and I watched the Dodgers / Mets game. She paid attention to it more than I did--I kept watching a play here and there, and then losing interest. It was strange.

The plays I did watch, the ones I did pay attention to, though...and the players...it seemed like every one of them had a .300 batting average. Several catches right at the outfield wall kept the game excruciatingly (for the fans at Shea Stadium) scoreless for several innings. Tommy Glavine, who is from Billerica, and who at this point looks more like he should be in the broadcast booth than still pitching, spun a beauty for the Mets. It was a higher level of baseball than the one I'd been watching for the last couple of months, but I missed the Red Sox.

I am a Red Sox bigot. I will freely admit this. Those posters and postcards you sometimes see of the "view from Boston" where everything beyond Worcester is California and Japan are sometimes pretty close to my real worldview. I know players around the league in relation to what they have done for or against the Red Sox; I know teams in relation to how much or how little they challenge the Red Sox historically. What I remember about Carlos Beltran, for example, is the hot stove season in which the radio wires in Boston were aglow with buzz about acquiring him from the Houston Astros.

So there was, of course, Gump, and Nomar, and even Derek, chewing away on something in the Dodgers dugout. Pedro's sidelined. Tommy Glavine's from Billerica. Everyone else was a stranger to me. Well...except Buelly, who made a miraculous appearance at the dugout rail, curling his hands into his jacket sleeves and huddling into himself in the chilly autumn air. I'm sorry...you can't just take my Buelly away for months and months and then give me something like that all at once come October. That just ain't right.

We went out for a cigarette mid-game, and when we came back, it was the bottom of the sixth, bases loaded, two outs. The pitching coach and infielders were gathered around the Dodgers' relief pitcher Brett Tomko; sweat was pouring down his face. His sandy blonde hair was standing out from his neck in wet curls with all the sweat. He was puffing out his cheeks and blowing to try to calm himself, rubbing up the ball frantically.

Eventually, Tomko would be relieved (or not) by Mark Hendrickson, in my opinion a dead ringer for John Smoltz except without the same ability (at least last night) to get outs, the Mets would score two more runs, and that would essentially be the ball game. But it was that moment with Tomko, hyperventilating, hands working over the ball, he and everyone around him on the mound and everyone in the stands looking like they were going to blow chunks at any moment, that really made me feel acutely what I was missing.

Of course, things have been hectic and intense with me lately in virtually all other areas of my life. It's not good, it's not bad, but it's...a lot. A lot is going on right now, and it doesn't look to stop until November. I have to say the Red Sox may have done me a favor by making it so that I didn't have to add playoff baseball intensity, worry, aggravation, and sleeplessness on top of everything else.

Or as Julia put it, "It's good of the Red Sox to take some time off this year and let our ulcers heal over."

P.S. Please see also the footage linked here of Joel Zumaya's performance yesterday against the Yankees. I am hoping Sam is still alive after that game.

October 03, 2006

First a funny little anecdote. Sunday morning I woke up at my best friend's house where I and a few other friends had crashed after a bachelorette party Saturday night. In the room with me were myself, my best friend, my best friend's boyfriend, and my friends Andy and Tim, both gay. K's boyfriend and I were watching ESPN, which was devoting a soft-focus, pretentiously soundtracked montage retrospective to Carson Palmer's injury during last year's playoffs.

Timmy looked up from his iBook to watch it bemusedly for a few moments. "The schmaltz of sports coverage is sometimes surprising," he said. "The drama they put into it."

"You have a point," I replied. "But, I mean...he blew out his knee. It was their first trip to the playoffs in a decade and his second play from scrimmage."

Anyway. Meanwhile.

That Patriots game was just what I needed. The barbarism and brutality of it...the merciless, systematic, almost surgical dismantling of a very good opponent...the sheer, unadulterated dominance of the Patriots win.

At this point in the baseball season--about a third of the way through, give or take, the feeling is entirely different. I believe that at this point in the baseball season, we're all still rejoicing about the return of spring to the earth and other such pagan-esque conflations and overinflations of the sport. Around now, a baseball team has already played a mind-numbing number of games, and they're beginning to blur together, but pleasantly. The little shards and scenes and pieces of games that stay with you are couched comfortably in a blur of extravagant sunshine, fresh grass, sweet-smelling dirt, popcorn, hot dogs, fluffy clouds...

We in Boston approach this football season already beaten into submission by the fortunes (or lack thereof) of our baseball team. Now is not the time for nostalgia and picnic blankets. Now what we need is revenge.

For a while, the Patriots weren't delivering. They were squeaking out wins, but it wasn't the same Prussian march to absolute victory to which we have become accustomed. Then, last week, facing the resurgent Cincinnati Bengals--the same Bengals that had shocked the World Champions the week before--there it was.

To say the running game came together would be an understatement. "We have 200-plus yards rushing," my Dad kept saying during the second half. "The New England Patriots have over 200 yards rushing and three rushing touchdowns."

Brady got his points in too, gunning a couple of touchdown passes and grinning behind his facemask by the end.

But by far the most pleasurable part of the game came in what could be termed "garbage time" in the fourth quarter, when Carson Palmer was sacked and stripped of the ball thankyouverymuch, and the turnover was capped off by a Patriots' touchdown.

"That's right," I said. "Break their spirits. Put 'em away." There is no more vicious oppressor than one who has been a victim.

Now all we need is for the Patriots to roll right over Miami next week, and put that Sports Illustrated prediction nonsense to rest once and for all.

Otherwise, I think Chad Finn already put it best: "Appropriate ending when you think about it, what with circumstances conspiring to ruin something potentially memorable one last time."

P.S. I'm not a big fan of Globe Sox coverage, unless it's the new dearly departed Chris Snow or the occasional Bob Ryan column, and Gordon Edes has been especially despicable of late with his jumping on the Manny-bashing bandwagon, but this is a good piece--a season retrospective that is comprehensive and critical but not hysterical, overwrought, or founded on wild speculation.

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